


The Arrow

by innocentsmith



Category: 16th & 17th Century CE RPF
Genre: F/M, Gen, Kings & Queens, Poetry, Possibly Counts As Thomas Wyatt Fanfic Too, Sonnet, Stepmothers, Vaguely Metaphysical Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-10
Updated: 2010-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-06 03:21:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innocentsmith/pseuds/innocentsmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anne Boleyn (born 1500 or 1507, wedded 1533, executed 1536) - second and most influential wife of Henry VIII: reputed witch, disputed beauty, inadvertent cause of the Church of England, unkind stepmother, convicted traitor, condemned adultress, supposed martyr, beloved of the poet who created the English sonnet, mother of Elizabeth I.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Arrow

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a treat for iphianassa in the Yuletide 2008 Challenge. Many thanks, as always, to hangingfire, for patience and sympathy with my endless dithering.

Anne Boleyn (born 1500 or 1507, wedded 1533, executed 1536) - second and most influential wife of Henry VIII: reputed witch, disputed beauty, inadvertent cause of the Church of England, unkind stepmother, convicted traitor, condemned adultress, supposed martyr, beloved of the poet who created the English sonnet, mother of Elizabeth I.

_"'noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am  
and wild to hunt, though I seem tame'"  
\--Thomas Wyatt, "Whoso List to Hunt, I Know Where Is a Hind"_  


My headless body in an arrow-chest  
laid, and I in life an arrow was - slim, dark  
and sharp, and quick, and broken at the last,  
in vain attempt to heal the wounded mark  
a god's hands set me to.  


Shall I repent,

  
I who was born to rise but made to fall?  
An arrow's made to fall, even when sent  
to kill a dear a king kept.  


O we all

  
have little necks, we stepmothers, we queens!  
we women who take power from a man  
and bear his jeweled collar, which is seen  
to say them, "touch me not." And yet they can  
not read the death that's next.  


I dream of flight

  
a daughter for whom the very winds will fight. 


End file.
